DSandberg
Posts: 107
Joined: 6/19/2002
From: MN
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[COLOR=purple]Well, that just rocked. By that I don't mean that I handily killed the AI side, 'cause it was a bit of a squeaker and could easily have gone either way ... but boy, did it feel real and engrossing! (This is my first AAR, by the way. Forgive me if I don't write it in the normal fashion ... I didn't save any of the turn summaries, so this is just from memory. So here goes. American player vs. AI, Scenario #1, historical difficulty setting.)[/COLOR]
[B]The Battle of Basilaki Island - May 5th-8th, 1942[/B]
On the first of May, TF 201 with the carriers Lexington and Yorktown and with Spruance commanding was sent north from Noumea toward the Guadalcanal area (with the oiler Neosho and the destroyer Sims trailing along behind) to oppose a possible Japanese move on Tulagi and/or Lunga. Meanwhile a surface combatant group from Brisbane with heavy cruisers Chicago and Australia was sent to Tugali with Carpendar in command. A picket of subs was set up in the slot, with another group of subs dispatched from Brisbane and bound for the vicinity of Gili Gili. Meanwhile, a second base force was ferried to Port Moresby via Dakotas, to support additional fighters and medium bombers being transferred there from the Townsville area
On May 4th both Spruance and Carpendar arrived in the Tulagi area apparently unspotted by search planes, largely due (I suspect) to particularly bad weather over the prior several days combined with one successful B-17 raid on the airfield at Rabaul that inflicted some significant runway damage. However, as it turns out the IJN wasn't making any sort of move in the Guadalcanal area at all. Instead on this day IJN transports and escorts were spotted northeast of Gili Gili and off of Buna, and shortly thereafter a search plane picked up IJN carriers just to the southeast of Finschafen. That carrier force delivered a heavy strike to ground units at Port Moresby later that day, but without inflicting as much damage as they had undoubtedly hoped for, largely due to 40-plus fighters flying CAP over the vital installation.
On the 5th, Spruance was ordered to the west into the vicinity of Woodlark Island to take action against the transports headed for Gili Gili, and Carpendar was ordered to make a fast run to Gili Gili itself in an attempt to catch some transports there at night. It was hoped that the bad weather would last one more day and hence might allow these forces to close on Gili Gili and the IJN transports before the IJN carriers could spot them and react.
However, while running west TF 201 was finally spotted by a Mavis search plane from Rabaul, and the IJN carrier force moved quickly to close the distance, moving east of Dobadura. Fortunately for the Americans, weather conditions prevented both carrier task forces from finding each other with any strikes during the day. Spruance did manage to get off a limited strike against transports that had already arrived at Gili Gili and were unloading there, with SBDs scoring a few hits. Meanwhile, a low level B17 raid from Cooktown against the IJN carriers came up empty*, but later on in the day the Fortresses did score a single hit on a transport at Gili Gili. Unfortunately Port Moresby was closed down due to weather as well. The Japanese transports arriving at Buna went unmolested (both this day and for most of the rest of the battle).
May 6th was to be the fateful day of the fight. But first, overnight an American submarine torpedoed one of the transports at Gili Gili. It then paid dearly for the attack, succumbing to a barrage of depth charges from the IJN escorts.
On the morning of the 6th, with the weather clearing, Spruance eschewed the conservative idea of retiring to the southeast and made a daring dash to the southwest (obliquely toward the enemy carrier TF), just skirting past the eastern shores of Basilaki Island to move about 75 miles south of Gili Gili. Further to the east, Carpendar's cruiser group continued pushing westward toward Gili Gili, expecting to arrive at the port in about 36 hours.
As Spruance was moving south of Basilaki Island, search planes spotted IJN carriers only about 60 miles to the north. Spruance quickly got off strikes, even stripping his own CAP to the minimum in order to have sufficient escorting fighters. Although the enemy carriers were launching strikes of their own, as Spruance would soon learn, the American strikes were to reach their prey first.
The first wave to arrive consisted of about 30 SBDs, all of the TBDs and half a dozen escorting Wildcats. Several dozen Zeros rose to meet them, knocking down a number of the bombers. Those that got through were mostly chewed up by AA fire, and didn't manage to score any hits.
However shortly thereafter a second wave of American planes arrived ... 30 more SBDs and a larger contingent of Wildcats. This time most of the dive bombers got through, and savaged the carrier Shokaku with half a dozen 1000 lb. bomb hits. Zuikaku suffered one bomb impact as well, but didn't appear to be badly damaged.
Shortly thereafter a well-coordinated Japanese strike arrived over TF 201, with 44 Vals, 38 Kates and a large group of escorting Zeros. A meager CAP of less than a dozen Wildcats met them, but these Wildcats lived up to their name, managing to down several Zeros and about eight bombers, while only losing a few of their own number. All the same, a large number of attackers got past them to attack the fleet. For a while it appeared that the American carriers might manage to dodge all of the attacks, but then Yorktown took several torpedo and bomb hits in short order and began listing. Lexington took a single torpedo hit, but continued operations without pause.
That evening, the disabled Yorktown detached from TF 201 and limped toward home at 14 knots with an escorting destroyer, with her squadrons dispersed either to Lexington or to Port Moresby. Unfortunately she didn't quite make it, as will be explained later.
The next day, Spruance retired to the south to manage Lexington's damage. He stayed just within range to dispatch a punishing followup strike of SBDs against the transports still in harbor at Gili Gili. LBA from Port Moresby joined in the fun, including refugee dive bombers from Yorktown getting a bit of revenge, while Carpendar's cruisers continued closing in on Gili Gili from the northeast for the kill.
A Japanese search plane picked up the Lexington, and a small strike of less than ten Nells armed with torpedoes came in later on in the day. One Nell somehow got through the CAP and AA to put a fish into Lexington's side (her 2nd of the battle), but the tough old broad was not to be denied on this day ... once again she shrugged off the hit and continued operating at full speed and capacity.
During the day search planes picked up the IJN carrier fleet, apparently with all carriers still afloat, retiring to the north. The IJN carriers dispatched two strikes of moderate size that day: the first against the refueling TF of Sims and Neosho in the morning (sinking the former and damaging the oiler enough to force it to retire), and then against Carpendar's cruisers in the afternoon as he approached Darubia, in which the light cruiser Hobart was severely damaged and one of the destroyers was hit, with an additional but insubstantial bomb hit on the cruiser Australia.
Overnight Carpendar, already bloodied by airstrikes, finally arrived off of Gili Gili, only to encounter two screening IJN heavy cruisers. Although the Allied force both outnumbered (4 to 2) and outmaneuvered their opponents, they were no match for the nightfighting skills of the IJN and got the worst of the exchange, with the Australia suffering particularly badly. Nonetheless, Carpendar managed to press on past to sink two transports and inflict serious damage on at least two others, although in the process the screening IJN escorts did still more damage to the Australia, which after this encounter was left in a bad way. On the good side (from the US point of view), almost every surviving transport and escort from the Japanese invasion of Gili Gili had been heavily damaged by now.
This marked the last of the surface naval actions. The next day Carpendar retired to the south, with all his ships battered and the cruiser Australia barely even seaworthy. The following night a Japanese submarine delivered the knockout punch to Australia, in the form of a pair of torpedoes that sent her to the bottom before sunrise. Meanwhile Spruance moved back to the north to attempt another strike against the IJN transports at Gili Gili, but by then they had left the harbor and were not spotted again until nightfall. That same night a Japanese sub unsuccessfully attacked one of Lexington's screening cruisers, and since at least one other enemy sub had also been spotted in the vicinity, Spruance decided not to press his luck. He called it a day and TF 201 retired from the battle and headed back to Noumea.
Meanwhile, five American S-class subs had formed a picket north of Gili Gili and intercepted the damaged Japanese transports slowly retiring from there, sending another one beneath the waves that night, and sinking two more in the days after while pursuing them back to the north toward Gasmata.
It is unknown exactly when, but Shokaku eventually lost her fight and sank at some point during the northward retreat of the IJN carrier force. Yorktown almost made it back to Noumea, but finally succumbed to ongoing flooding damage and went down. So each side lost one fleet carrier.
[COLOR=firebrick]Outcome: American marginal victory. Gili Gili and Buna in Japanese hands but being pounding severely by LBA; Port Moresby mostly untouched except for one carrier raid and a few abortive raids from Rabaul that were mostly turned aside by a strong CAP; Lunga and Tulagi in American hands (with Tulagi occupied by a regiment brought up from Noumea by transports). The US lost four ships (the Yorktown, the Australia, the destroyer Sims and one sub), while the IJN lost 18 ships including the Shokaku, several destroyers and a multitude of transports.[/COLOR]
[SIZE=1]* This is where the 1.2 patch seems to really make a positive difference. Throughout the scenario the land-based level bombers in general did score half a dozen hits, so it was far from ineffective ... but all hits were against transports or their escorts, and in most cases after those ships had already been damaged and slowed down by attacks from other sources. LBA did pound the heck out of Japanese troops at Gili Gili in the latter part of the scenario though, killing over 2000 troops during four continuous days of raids.[/SIZE]
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"... planning and preparations were made with great efforts with this day as a goal. Before this target day came, however, the tables had been turned around entirely and we are now forced to do our utmost to cope with the worst. Thi
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